The Beautiful Women of Colorado Springs
by LynnEGib
Summary: Written for Challenge 1 with pictures


The "Beautiful" Women of Colorado Springs

The best party of the year in Colorado Springs was always their Halloween Party. The residents planned their costumes for months ahead of time. Many of the town's residents choose to wear scary costumes. This story, however, is not about Halloween, but another time some of the residents decided to dress in costume, which caused the town to earn the reputation of having the ugliest women in the territory.

A woman from a proper eastern family arrived by the daily stagecoach. Her youngest daughter had moved to Colorado Springs against her mother's wishes. Her mother decided to travel to where her daughter moved to see what it was like for herself as well as try again to bring her daughter back home. When she arrived she learned that her daughter was living in what her east coast home would consider a shack. She stayed in that shack with her daughter and learned her personal needs had to be attended to outside where others that might come along could see. She was used to taking care of such things privately in her home. She even believed that her husband shouldn't see such things. She couldn't believe that her daughter had no problem with this change in circumstances. Her mother had tried to teach her the rules of proper society, but felt like a failure. It didn't help her to understand how her daughter could live like this when one of her daughter's male friends stopped by just as the older woman was trying to bathe herself as best she could with just a rag and a bit of water outside at the well. She was so embarrassed. When the friend apologized for interrupting her private time it didn't help.

The next morning, the two women went into town. As the younger one tended to her business, her mother wandered around town. All of a sudden she spotted two very ugly women heading towards the saloon. As they got closer she realized they were actually men dressed up as women. Why a man would do such a thing was beyond her comprehension. Of course why her daughter would want to live in such a place, as this was also a mystery to her.

After this shock the older woman went inside to wait for her daughter. Meanwhile over at the saloon two bandits entered with their faces covered with bandanas and their guns drawn. Hank had no choice but to hand over all of the bar's receipts to the armed robbers. They also took the valuables from the customers. As the bandits were leaving the bar they wanted to take a hostage for protection from a posse they knew would follow. The "woman" they grabbed was one of the two disguised men though. The bandits threw him across one of their horses and took off out of town.

As the other man dressed as a woman ran home to change his clothes and get his gun, he ran into Michaela and her mother. Michaela of course instantly recognized Loren and made a joke about his attire with a big smile on her face. With that her mother jerked her head around and looked at her daughter like she was a stranger. How could her youngest daughter, who she raised properly in Boston, find a man dressed as a woman just an amusing event? As far as she was concerned this was totally unacceptable.

When the sun rose the next morning the posse dragged into town having lost the robbers and any chance of getting their money back. At about the same time that morning the bandits awoke with the man dressed as a woman as their hostage. The older brother of the robbers wanted to kill the hostage because they didn't need "her" any more; they had already gotten away safely. The younger brother convinced his brother not to because he felt sorry for her. They didn't realize he was a her, but they felt "she" was the ugliest woman they had ever seen and they believed that someone like her would never find a husband. As these robbers roamed around Colorado they spread their feelings of Colorado Springs, that it had the ugliest women in the territory. Even with the train coming to town the population did not grow as fast as expected. Why would new men settle down in the town with the ugliest women in the world?


End file.
